Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

distinct, and the back gilt just enough. It is a delightfully cool looking volume. Next we take up a splendid set of octavos, - the Fabliaux et Contes des Poètes François des XI à XVe Siècles, etc., publiés par Barbazan. Their stately, princely air, in their robes of scarlet morocco and gold, bespeaks the taste of a palace, and the name of Simier, Relieur du Roi, settles their paternity. Gold ornaments in copious profusion are worked upon their covers, but all so neatly and clearly cut as to leave no sensation whatever of heaviness or crowding upon the eye.

Of Trautz-Bauzonnet, it is not probable we shall need to say more than that he occupies in Paris very much the position of Hayday in London. Facile princeps of all his tribe, never turning out anything less than good work, he yet appears so confident of his own resources, as to neglect the constant pursuit of something higher, something yet unattained. His gold work on the back of a Poésies du Duc Charles d'Orleans (the edition edited by Aimé Champollion-Figeac), though more neat than the English, is coarser than Niedrée's; the boards, too, of this volume are thinner, and not so well seasoned as Simier's. Le Parnasse Occitanien (a selection of the ancient Troubadours, published at Toulouse in 1819), and an Essai d'un Glossaire Occitanien, two rich-looking volumes in plum-colored Levant, with very little gilding, exhibit neat work. But with lettering so large and fresh, care should have been taken that the characters of Parnasse should be more uniform with those of Occitanien, and that the latter word should have a period after it. But it is impossible to perceive the faintest glimmering of a fault in him, after looking at the magnificent abortion of one of our best Cisatlantic binders, in the preparation of Henry Noel Humphrey's Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, printed in gold, silver, and colors, in elephant folio. The covers are of brown Levant, with a very handsome Grolier dead-tooling, and, in point of strength and endurance, we dare say it will last for ever. But what a scene is presented when the linings are revealed! Gold spread out on morocco, as lavishly as tastelessly, in masonic aprons, architectural devices, and a pack of like skimble-skamble stuff, all of whose obnoxiousness is forcibly

brought out by fly-leaves of peach-colored watered poplin. This precious morsel of binding cost seventy dollars, and it was the last feat in life of the unhappy man who wrought it. Peace to his manes! it is well that he is gone.

The curious reader, who would pursue this subject still further, as well as the workman who cares to seek for honorable advancement in his business, will be amply repaid in the perusal of Lenormand, Hannett, or Arnett. Cundall gives a series of patterns for elegant work; and Bonnardot will teach him to restore the most begrimed, spotted, greasy old tatterdemalion of a book to its ancient cleanliness and purity. As for "Folious Appearances," were it not that we are convinced beyond a peradventure of its authorship, we should strongly doubt the writer's sanity. It is certainly the production of one "John Tupling," as he chooses to subscribe himself, an enterprising London book-dealer, who in his catalogues denominates his stock "the cattle upon a thousand hills," and abounds in countless quizzical oddities of language. Mr. Tupling has printed with much taste a little essay in opposition to the present mode of lettering our books. He would no longer have "Shakespeare's Plays" or "Johnson's Rambler" appear on the back of a volume. "Remainder Biscuit," he thinks, would be a more expressive inscription for the latter, while for the former he suggests this: "Topmost Gargarus,". from the lines:

"Behind the valley topmost Gargarus

Stands up and takes the morning."

Or, citing from Shakespeare himself, he would thus rechristen his works: "Royally Manned."

"The castle royally is manned, my lord,

It doth contain a king.” *

In the words of Sir Thomas Browne, which he takes for their motto, we think Mr. Tupling's proposed reforms are truly but "folious appearances, and not the central and vital interiors of truth," and we cordially echo Sir Hugh, in his second motto: "What phrase is this? why, it is affectations!"

We need hardly warn our readers against the bad advice of

# King Richard II., Act 3.

Mr. Tupling. The Aglossa pinguinalis, the destroying bookworm itself, could hardly create more confusion in a wellordered library, than the adoption of this whimsical theory. And, by the way, a word about this autumnal wretch and his equally unpleasant little friends, the wood-boring beetles. It is useless to try to catch these Omars in miniature, when once they begin their ravages. Parnell, indeed, opens a poem with the stirring shout:

"Come hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day

The bookworm, ravening beast of prey";

and concludes it with the arrest and the immolation of the caitiff; but in this he took, we will wager, a poet's license. The game is not to be run down so speedily. Prevention in such a case is far better than cure, and a little alum or vitriol mixed with the binder's paste will set the marauder at defiance. Where this has been neglected, a strong infusion in the paste with which the book-plate is fastened in will be of service.

ART. V.- Euvres du COMTE J. DE MAISTRE. 9 tomes. Lyon: Louis Lesne.

1843.

Tome I. Considerations sur la France. · Essai sur le Principe Generateur des Constitutions Politiques.

Tome II. Delais de la Justice Divine. Lettres à un Gen

tilhomme Russe.

Tomes III., IV. Du Pape.

Tome V. De l'Eglise Gallicane.

Tomes VI, VII. Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg.

Tomes VIII, IX. Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon.

As the strife between Protestantism and Romanism is not a casual or temporary affair, but a necessary contest between different ideals, the question continually recurs in regard to their claims, doctrines, and prospects. Romanism is the normal development of social, moral, and political influences that date from the first era of Christianity. It resulted from a fusion of ideas, polities, religions, and nationalities. It is

a resumé of Pagan mythology, Jewish ordinances, and Roman organization. These debouched, as it were, into the Christian Church; and the Church thus modified assimilated to itself as it best could the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic races. Christianity, in seeming to conquer, admitted many of the customs, rites, institutions, and ideas of the conquered religions. Moreover, this, which we often call its corruption, was an essential element in the work which it was to accomplish for humanity, in the upbuilding of a new and higher order of civilization. The Church, just as it existed from the sixth to the sixteenth century, with its unity of ecclesiastical authority, its splendid ceremonial, its terrible power of excommunication, and its attempts after universal dominion, was needed during the period of fierce conflict among kings, nobles, and nations, during the reign of Pagan violence, when a "still, small voice" would have been wholly overpowered. Isolated individuals and small communities, however pure and peaceful, would have been swept away by the avalanches from the North and East, so that Christianity, if surviving at all, would have been but as a vague reminiscence of some dream too divine for earth.

The Roman Church fully recognized its mission to consolidate its power and extend its authority; and when Imperial Rome crumbled to pieces, because its Pagan soul had already fled, and the fresh and vigorous nations of Northern Europe found its corrupt corpse an easy prey, the Church gained a more extended dominion, at least in Europe, than the Empire had lost. Its missionaries penetrated farther than the Roman eagle had flown. The rude barbarians, in the glow of their vigorous health, became the converts of the Romish priesthood. They ranked themselves as sons of the Church, fought her battles, and infused a new element of life into the corrupt and stagnant pool of sensual degradation. They have become, as "Goths and Vandals," the by-word of reproach; but they were in a good sense "the scourge of God," for they were the regenerating force of the modern world. While the Roman Empire was decaying from its own inherent corruption, the hordes of Northern nations pressed onward, steadily as a glacier, from century to century. The Goths in the third cen

tury had a province ceded to them, with the Danube as its northern boundary. In the fourth, the Ostrogoths, driven forward by the Huns, settled the province of Mosia. In the fifth, they invaded Italy, and, under Alaric, sacked Rome itself, retiring afterwards into the southern provinces of Gaul. The Burgundians advanced step by step into the eastern part of Gaul, and the Goths extended themselves over Spain, and finally over Italy. These tribes, advancing thus gradually, and gaining from time to time stationary settlements in provinces where Roman civilization prevailed, became affected by its influences; and, assimilating themselves in a measure to the higher culture amidst which they lived, they imparted, as well as received, a new element of growth and vitality.

[ocr errors]

It is to this rich variety of commingling principles in character, institutions, and blood, this fertile soil in which were sown such diverse kinds of seed, that we owe the developments of medieval civilization. Its culminating period is represented by Dante. In him it found a voice; and, having thus flowered in song, and become embalmed in his eternal verse, it was to change, decay, and pass away. The genius of Northern, Scandinavian life thenceforth asserted its supremacy, and reformations, discoveries of new worlds in the physical and mental sphere, free institutions, and popular governments were necessary, unavoidable facts. We live in the midst of this revolution, and are carrying out this new ideal of civilization. It is wholly irreconcilable with the old. It is as different and distinct from the ideal of the Roman Catholic Church as that from the Greek, or as the Church itself from Imperial Rome. The hands upon the dial-plate of the ages do not move backward. Hence the foolishness of all

panics in regard to the increased sway of the Catholic power. No propagandism, tricks of cunning, or Middle-Age pietism and heroism, however devoted, no side currents and local, temporary influences of peculiar states and temperaments, can turn the onward march of modern civilization.

That there exist, however, many apparent tendencies towards Catholicism, cannot be denied. The bald Puritanism of our forefathers no longer satisfies the wants and instincts of the heart; and as the human heart is as old as humanity,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »